


Route 70, Northwest, Outside Roswell

by DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-13 22:43:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16901214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered/pseuds/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered
Summary: Things had gone a bit differently for Astra.  She crashed on earth and, without powers, had to figure out how to survive off the grid.  Naturally, farming was a bit of a calling.





	Route 70, Northwest, Outside Roswell

The sign on the bed of the pickup truck read “Fresh Produce - Home Grown” with little pictures of corn and tomatoes stenciled on it. She was not enough of an artist to trust in her ability to create a freehand representation. Painting had been her niece’s province.  

A hundred SUVs with children and pets spilling out of the windows would roll by her in a day.  Some would stop by her truck for the novelty of buying sweet huckleberries from the roadside. She sat, sipping water, watching the traffic disappear into the red, striated desert, mostly on its way to Roswell. She’d passed through there once. The “aliens” didn’t much resemble any that she’d run into in her substantial travels. The “flying saucer” spacecraft design, though most likely fictionalized, was somewhat elegant in its simplicity.

She was beaten brown by the sun and blown smooth by the wind and desert dust. She had shelter these days, but before this, she had spent cold desert nights huddled in bus stations, or truck stop bathrooms.  Sometimes if she was able to scratch up enough money she’d buy an omelet and coffee in a diner and fall asleep sitting up in the booth. It was still less hardship than what she’d seen before she crashed her pod in the gully fifteen miles west of Roswell.

If you had told her back when she was commanding troops during the Daxamite Wars that she’d one day be an escaped convict, hiding on a backward little world that still burned fossil fuels, she’d have laughed.

 _“Te ves bien, chica rubia,”_  Elario told her. _You look good, blondie._ He handed her a bottle of water.

 _“Muchas gracias,”_ she replied.

Spanish was the language of the laborers, and she had learned a little from him when she worked in the fields, after she had first arrived here.  The humans had structured their society so that there were few options for survival for those who did not belong to their systems. So she had packed crates of eggs and tomatoes under the suspicious eyes of farm bosses who didn’t understand why a woman who looked like her needed to labor in fields. It had been some time since they worked together, but occasionally, he and his family would pass by in the back of some pickup truck whose bed was wedged full of farm laborers, and they’d get the driver to stop. Sometimes it would be months between sightings. But it was something like having a friend.

She accepted the bottle of water and raised it in his direction. She handed him a small carton of huckleberries in thanks, and watched him jog back to the truck, clamber in, and ride away.

She wished she could have done more for him.  She wished she could have done more for just about everyone.

  


***

  


Through the rising waves of heat off the blacktop, a small, slim figure approached, pushing a motorcycle that was black, sleek, shiny, and clearly completely out of gas.  The helmet sat askew on the handlebars and a black riding jacket lay draped over the seat. The human rolled to a stop in front of her, breathing thickly and smiling. “Sure is a relief to see you,” she said, as though she’d known Astra all of her life and had just been hoping she’d run into her. Her eyes were dark and warm, intelligent and maybe a little sad. Her smile seemed to have roots someplace deep in her body.

Astra gave her a polite, awkward smile.

“Been pushing my bike up this interstate since two miles back,” she went on, “and nobody would stop for me. I’d call AAA but…”  She reached into her back pocket and produced a small phone, which she waved around, by way of demonstration. “...no bars.” The human wiped her brow and gestured to Astra’s beat-up 1982 Ford F150 with its bed full of produce. “Don’t suppose I could trouble you for a lift to the nearest gas station? I seem to have underestimated the distance between filling stations on this part of the highway.”

Astra hesitated. “I… I really don’t like to leave this spot.  I haven’t sold enough for the day.”

The stranger glanced at the bed of the truck.  Her fingers were soft as she shoved two warm, vaguely damp twenty dollar bills into Astra’s hand.  Astra started to object, but the stranger closed Astra’s purple-stained fingers around the bills, insisting, “That ought to be enough for all those huckleberries, right?”

She scoffed. It was really too much.  “But how would you carry them?”

The stranger shrugged cheerfully.  “I’ll put them in my backpack.”

It wasn’t a very sensible plan. But Astra very much wanted to give her a ride to the filling station, despite her misgivings about strange humans. Not all of her experiences with them had been good ones, after all.

  


******

  
  


And so, despite Astra's advice, the human who called herself Alex loaded the dozen or so cartons of huckleberries into her backpack.  As they traveled from the filling station with the windows open, the smell of them permeated the air, along with the stink of gasoline from the tightly-capped but still pungent travel can of fuel that the human held between her feet on the passenger side.

Astra couldn't help glancing over and noticing the little beads of sweat that collecting on the back of the human’s neck.  Astra was not entirely impervious to the dry heat of the Chihuahuan desert but she'd gotten used to it, she supposed. She felt as though she didn't sweat quite the way she used to. She wasn’t sure why the human’s sweat fascinated her. She had seen humans sweat before. All the time, in fact.

She then became aware of the human noticing her looking, and turned her eyes back to the road.

The stranger sat quietly beside her in the cab of the truck, gazing at her thoughtfully as they rumbled down the interstate.  It had been a long time since she’d gotten such close scrutiny. “Why are you looking at me?”

A silence followed, filled with the mournful sounds of a Merle Haggard ballad on the radio.

“You just look familiar,” the pretty stranger finally said.

Her tanned cheeks felt warm for a moment.  “I get that a lot,” she said.

She didn’t.

"Are you hungry?" Astra asked awkwardly.  She knew she didn't have very much more money than the forty dollars that the willowy brunette had pressed into her hand a few minutes ago.  "There's a diner a couple of miles up that way. Maybe you need fuel as much as your bike does?"

The human smiled.  "Yeah, sure, sounds good.  What's their specialty?"

Astra shrugged.  "It's a truck stop diner.  You know, the usual things, I suppose.  Well, and they do make huckleberry pie."  

"Are they from your huckleberries?"

"Often, yes."

"Then let’s go," she decided.

Astra felt a flutter in her stomach.  The human was smiling at her, and her eyes were interested, curious, darting over her in ways that Astra could not quite remember experiencing.  It reminded her somehow of the way that some males would look at her in prison, but there was nothing predatory in her passenger's gaze, only a sincere and overwhelming sense of interest.

  
  
  


*******

  


The diner had linoleum checkered floors in black and white, and a  counter with a row of stools with thick metal bases, and a bevy of pies under little glass domes along the counter next to the register. An elderly black and white television over the counter played local news stations and sports matches that were impossible to follow because the image was too small and grainy to tell what was happening most of the time.  

Astra ordered herself a burger.  Alex ordered herself a large plate of eggs and corned beef hash.  

Astra wrinkled her nose.  

"What?  It's not good here?"

Astra shook her head.  "I don't think I like corned beef hash anywhere, at any time."

Alex chuckled.  They waited for the food, Astra stirring idly at her heavily sweetened iced tea.  The human had a certain stiffness to her posture, a certain way of carrying herself, that Astra found familiar.  "So, are you ex-military?"

She shook her  head. "Law enforcement."

Astra grew suddenly quiet and cast her eyes down, peering into her glass.  She had never enjoyed running into law enforcement. Nothing good ever happened to anyone she'd liked here on Earth as a result of an encounter with law enforcement.  Not to the laborers that time near San Jacinto and not to her, when she punched a farm boss for refusing to pay the group she was traveling with what they were owed. It had taken six officers to subdue her and a lot of contact with night sticks, and she had learned her lesson.  No more tangling with law enforcement. She was lucky she had only been beaten up and not arrested or more thoroughly investigated.

Alex seemed to notice her sudden withdrawal and gave her a sly smile. “I’m gonna need to see a permit for the fruit and vegetable stand, ma’am.”

Astra froze for a moment, then perceived her attempt at levity and nodded, trying to smile a little in response. Inside, she shook off her fears.  "So, what kind, then?"

"FBI," she replied.  Astra nodded, only partially understanding.  The F was for Federal, which meant a higher level of government tasked with more serious crimes.  "Nothing exciting, though. Just financial crimes division."

Astra nodded again, not fully understanding but grasping the general idea.  She didn't entirely believe that the human was the sort who spent her days interrogating browbeaten bookkeepers.  She had trained enough men in her time to know that one has a certain bearing when they're combat trained. A look of calm, coiled readiness, a kind of physical pride.  She'd had much more of it herself when she'd first arrived here, and even now, it had not entirely left her. "Do you enjoy your work?"

The human gave her a cheerful shrug.  "It's alright. I don't mind it. Sometimes it's interesting, you know.  I don't have a partner though, haven't for a little while now, and that's been hard."

"You sound lonely."

The human swirled the iced tea in her own cup.   "I am, a little. My job makes it a little hard to get close to people. And I have a sister with… special needs. So it’s hard. But I have family, and a few good friends."  And then she looked at Astra again, that look of focus that said she wasn't interested in anything else on Earth at that moment. "And now I've got you."

“Me?”  Astra half wanted to look around, feeling sure that Alex was talking to someone else.

“Well, you drove me to the gas station, and now we’re having lunch together.  I’d say that makes us friends, right?”

Astra’s cheeks grew warm again and she fiddled with the paper straw wrapper on the table.

“Wait, this is my favorite trick,” Alex said, seizing the straw wrapper and twisting it around on itself over and over, until it was tightly wound. What was she doing?  She laid the twisted-up wrapper on the table, then, with her straw, she carefully pulled a few drops of iced tea from her cup and dripped them onto the twisted-up paper.  The straw wrapper began to writhe like a snake as the liquid caused it to unwind itself.

Astra gasped, a quiet little joyful sound. She could not remember when she’d last made that sound.

“You’ve seen that trick before, haven’t you?”

Astra shook her head.  She grabbed Alex’s straw wrapper and attempted to duplicate the experiment. To her delight, it worked just the same as before.  She flagged the waitress down and asked for two glasses of water with straws, and repeated the experiment with the additional wrappers.  She was unable to explain why such a trifle delighted her so much.

“It’s the little things, isn’t it?” Alex sighed.

Astra nodded.  “Yes.” All she had anymore were little things. Her ancient truck, her beat-up trailer, the little plot of land she parked it on and grew things on, rented on a handshake because she had no proper identification.

The waitress came with their food.  Alex wanted to know whether the huckleberry pie that day had been made with Astra’s berries.  The waitress confirmed that they had. After they ate their lunch, she ordered a piece and wolfed it down.  Then she gifted the entire backpack full of huckleberries to the diner, insisting that they would make better use of it than she would.  She kept only one carton for herself.

Astra knew it was dangerous to let a human so close to her. She’d seen others like herself, offworlders, donning capes and suits and being called heroes. They had different gifts here on Earth.  Once or twice, on the small, fuzzy, black and white television in the diner, she even thought she’d seen her niece (though she knew this was impossible). But she was quite clear that they were allowed to exist only because of their superior powers, and even then, that they were not even entirely left in peace.

She wasn’t sure why she had no such gifts.  She supposed they had done too many tests on her in prison. Whatever they had changed, whatever they had taken, she was only extraordinary in the same ways that she had been before. Her future held no heroism, she thought. She had learned that in her time among the day laborers.

She had been alone on Earth for a very long time now, and the pull of this human was like a gravity well.  And so, after Alex finished her pie, she asked, “Would you like to see my farm?”  


  


*****

  


They went back to where Alex had left her bike, gassed it up, and then she followed Astra back to the place she called home.

A scratched up, weatherbeaten, corrugated trailer with a sun-bleached awning over the door sat hunkered on the small plot. It had been a junker, but she had fixed it up herself, just like her truck.  Behind it, multitudes of wooden boxes with sugarsnap pea plants and stakes of yellow tomatoes stood, neat as rows of soldiers. The tomatoes were fat and each vine had a dozen or more.

“Boxes?” the human wondered.  “Because of the soil out here?”

“And for portability. I like having a farm I can take with me.”

"In case you have to leave in a hurry?"

Astra shrugged, knowing to admit this was probably revealing too much.  She wanted to reveal everything to Alex, but knew that it was unwise.

"So, do you need to do that often? Leave in a hurry?"

Astra shook her head.  "Not in a while. But you never know."  

They walked around the back to where the wooden boxes stood, and Alex spent a moment admiring everything that was growing in them.  "Amazing. You've really got the touch for this stuff."

"Thank you. I always wanted a garden." That was so.  Her world had been too polluted to grow things outdoors in the open air.  Cultivating her plants in soil and real rain from the sky was a joy she never thought she would have.  Exile had its up sides.

Alex stroked a round, ripe yellow tomato, and without looking at Astra, asked, "So... you're not American, are you?"

"No."

"And you're not here legally, are you?"

Astra didn't want to answer.  She wanted Alex to know everything, wanted to be vulnerable, but no.  That would be foolish.

"I don't care," Alex assured her.  "Believe me, immigration is not really my area.  I'm just... look, I'm just saying, you can be safe with me.  I have a lot of sympathy for the people who come here looking for a better life."

Astra didn't say anything.  She gazed at the wide open sky past Alex's shoulder.  

"You don't have to tell me anything if you don't want to.  Like I said, I have secrets too, and they make it hard for me to get close to people.  But if you want, it's safe."

Astra smiled.   _No, I'm not American, and I'm not here legally, and I'm not even human, but I think that would probably be a bridge too far for you._  She remained quiet.  "Would you like to see the inside of my trailer?"

Alex smiled.  "If you'd like to show me."

  
  


*******

  
  


The went inside.  Alex hoisted herself up onto the lip of the entry door.  "This trailer is pretty old."

"Yes," Astra said, "it was junk, in fact.  I fixed it up myself."

Alex whistled.  Astra knew that meant she was impressed.  

"The truck, too," she went on, wantonly.  "Junk. I got it running from parts and my own sweat."

Alex smiled. Astra’s insides prickled and quivered. “Do you… want some water?”

Alex nodded.

The trailer was small inside, really built for one person to live in, and they had to maneuver a little in the kitchen area so that Astra could get around to the mini-fridge.  She had a pitcher of water inside that she had distilled herself, not being fond of the plastic bottles of water for their environmental impact. She retrieved two cups, filled them, and handed one to Alex, who stood close in the cramped space.  She shuffled her toe along the faux wood linoleum floor.

“What are you hiding from out here?” Alex wondered as she sipped.

Astra smiled.  “Everything.”

“Fair enough.”

“What are you running from?” Astra asked after a moment.  Why would she be traveling alone, after all?

Alex shrugged.  “Everything.” She looked at Astra tenderly, and with her fingers, she traced the shock of white in her hair.  “Is this on purpose or were you born with it?”

Astra was both frightened by the closeness, the familiarity of the gesture, but also, something deep and powerful and forgotten in her craved it, and more.  “Born with it,” she whispered.

“Mutated KIT gene,” Alex whispered back.

Astra shook her head.  She was no kind of financial enforcer, this Alex.  She was something more, but for her own reasons, she couldn’t say. Astra didn’t care.

Because at that moment, Alex tipped up on her toes and kissed her, and the world stopped. Astra heard the rustle of cascalote branches further away on the property and the squeak of the flooring underneath their feet as they shifted their weight to lean into each other.  But it was the softness of the human’s mouth that made her ache, made her painfully aware of how long she had been alone.

She withdrew for a breath and looked at the human’s dark eyes, perceived the longing in them. “Come to my bed?” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

Alex smiled sadly. “I can’t stay.”

“Better that you don’t,” Astra assured her.

The afternoon was quiet, and the bed was too small, but they clasped hands and kissed, negotiating the space until they were so close together that it didn’t matter.  Every soft, careful touch was a question, and the answer was always yes.

She had not been touched softly in prison, or in war. She had not been touched softly by a husband who was more devoted lieutenant than lover, and certainly never in the fields pulling corn. The human was touching her so very softly, speaking tenderness against her skin with whispers. Her tongue tasted of diner coffee and huckleberry pie, and then later, it tasted of sex. She didn’t even notice when she began to weep.

The human paused and looked at her with serious eyes. “Are you okay? Do we need to stop?”

She wiped her eyes, shook her head, and smiled. “It’s just been a long time.”  

  


*****

  


_She had led soldiers in war.  She was a hero, then. When her world’s government refused to address her warnings that their own activities were would destroy them, she gathered her men and tried a rebellion.  It hadn’t gone well. Prison had been brutal, and her uprising had not gone as planned. Hers was the only escape pod that had not been blown out of the sky._

_And then she crashed here.  The last of her kind, she thought.  She quickly discerned that farm labor was her only option out here.  The first time she’d met Elario, he’d nicknamed her Chica Rubia --Blondie-- because, although not technically blonde, she was so much lighter than the rest of them. And though she spoke no Spanish at first, he was kind and helped her to get work with the rest of the group he and his family traveled with._

_On her first job, the farmhand looked askance at her as she climbed down from the truck; her pale skin, her bearing, which had still been proud, then. A general does not lose the air of command so easily. “You don’t look like a Mexican.”_

_She told him she was a veteran who was down on her luck. Technically, this was, of course, still true.  And when he saw her lift and haul a crate that would have given a man with shoulders twice her size trouble, he grudgingly let her work._

_She didn’t know what a fair wage was for the labor in the fields but she was sure that this probably wasn’t it.  She rarely came away with more than enough to eat for a few days and maybe share a cheap room someplace with a few other laborers. She didn’t speak enough Spanish to ask them why things were the way they were. But she learned the words to a lullabye and Elario’s littlest daughter curled up by her at night and asked her to sing sometimes._

_The farm bosses were difficult and often tried to underpay.  She tried to explain to Elario in her broken Spanish that they needed to band together, fight for what they were owed. Elario only kept shaking his head.  At first she thought he didn’t understand. Eventually she realized that it was she who didn’t understand. She was unaccustomed to having no leverage, and she was lost at the crossroads of two cultures, neither of which she fully understood._

_She eventually had to leave Elario’s group for their sake, because bosses didn’t want to deal with her after she’d started that fight.  That she had built this quiet life she had was a miracle. Self imposed exile wasn’t the worst, all things considered._

  
  


_****_

  


“Where do you go after this?” Astra murmured, running her fingers through Alex’s short, dark hair. “Roswell?”

Alex yawned and nestled her head in the curve of Astra’s neck.  “Nah, that place always seemed too silly to me. As if aliens who came here would have been driving actual flying saucers.”  She yawned again. “No, I really wanted to see the Painted Mountains, and then after that, I don’t know what.” A long pause.  “Maybe El Paso.” Another long pause. “Maybe I can even swing by here on my way back.”

Astra didn’t say anything.  She just held Alex tighter, breathed in her distinctly human scents, and sighed long and slow.

They made love once more, soft and leisurely, and then Alex got dressed.  Astra watched her reassemble herself piece by piece, sorry to see each part go.  They kissed a long, gentle kiss in the doorway of the trailer before Alex jumped down onto the dusty ground, and looked back up.

“It was nice meeting you.”

“Yes, it was. Be safe in your travels.”

Alex gave her a long look, and Astra recognized sadness in it. “You too,” she said finally.

Then she bought all of the corn in Astra’s truck, and rode away with it in her backpack.  Astra watched her disappear into the long, flat desert. It took a long time for her tiny shape to completely vanish.

A rare cloud front was rolling in, spitting little drops into the dust.  Astra opened the back of the flatbed of her truck, and one by one, stacked her boxes of tomato vines while the rain fell.

  



End file.
